Control Of Plasma Poloidal Shape And Position In The Diii D Tokamak

Historically, tokamak control design has been a combination of theory driving an initial control design and empirical tuning of controllers to achieve satisfactory performance. This approach was in line with the focus of past experiments on simply obtaining sufficient control to study many of the basic physics issues of plasma behavior. However, in recent years existing experimental devices have required increasingly accurate control. New tokamaks such as ITER or the eventual fusion power plant must achieve and confine burning fusion plasmas, placing unprecedented demands on regulation of plasma shape and position, heat flux, and burn characteristics. Control designs for such tokamaks must also function well during initial device operation with minimal empirical optimization required. All of these design requirements imply a heavy reliance on plasma modeling and simulation. Thus, plasma control design has begun to use increasingly modern and sophisticated control design methods. This paper describes some of the history of plasma control for the DIII-D tokamak as well as the recent effort to implement modern controllers. This effort improves the control so that one may obtain better physics experiments and simultaneously develop the technology for designing controllers for next-generation tokamaks.